Ecologica Montenegrina 11: 80-83 (2017) This journal is available online at: www.biotaxa.org/em

The predator becomes the prey: the katydid Erechthis gundlachi Bolívar, 1888 (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) feeding upon the Cuban Anolis homolechis (Cope, 1864) (: ), with some notes on Hispaniolan Erechthis Bolívar, 1888

SHEYLA YONG

Grupo de Sistemática y Ecología de Artrópodos CaribeñosCalle 200 # 3759, e/ 37 y 45, Reparto Versalles; La Lisa 13500; La Habana. Cuba. E-mail: [email protected]

Received: 3 September 2017│ Accepted by V. Pešić: 29 September 2017 │ Published online: 30 September 2017.

Katydids and are both highly diverse, widespread, and locally/seasonally abundant in the Caribbean. Lizards of the genus Anolis Daudin, 1802 have been repeatedly recorded as predators of orthopterans, a well known trophic relationship, e.g., Gundlach (1880), Barbour & Ramsden (1919), Ruibal (1964), Lando & Williams (1969), Garrido (1976), González Bermúdez & Rodríguez Schettino (1982), Rodríguez Schettino & Novo Rodríguez (1985), Silva Rodríguez & Estrada (1994), Rodríguez Schettino & Martínez Reyes (1996), Rodríguez Schettino & Lizana (1997), Rodríguez Schettino (1999). Also, photos and anecdotic descriptions of such events are regularly uploaded to many websites every year, see e.g., Sánchez Muñoz (2017) and fig. 1 herein.

Figure 1. A. Male of Anolis viridius Köhler & Blair Hedges, 2016 preying upon Erechthis ayiti at Polo, Bahoruco, southwestern Dominican Republic. B. Female of Anolis cyanostictus Mertens, 1939 preying upon a juvenile female unidentified Conocephalinae at National Botanical Garden, Santo Domingo, southern Dominican Republic. Photos courtesy Fr. Alejandro Sánchez.

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Figure 2. Adult female Erechthis gundlachi predating upon a juvenile male Anolis homolechis at La Gran Piedra, Santiago de Cuba, southeastern Cuba: A. Photographed at nature when found. B. Photographed after preservation, with millimetric scale for reference.

Conversely, the records of the orthopterans preying upon lizards in natural conditions are rare and have been poorly documented. In captive conditions, Naskrecki (2000: 31) recorded that the katidyd Copiphora rhinoceros Pictet, 1888 feeds on small individuals of the genus Norops Wagler, 1830 (currently a subgenus or a junior synonym of Anolis, depending on the source followed). On July 23th, 2017 at La Gran Piedra (montane rainforest of the Sierra Maestra Range, southeastern Cuba), while night-searching for orthopterans using the standard technique, i.e., detailed inspection of the vegetation and ground with the aid of white-light LED flashlights, an unusual situation was observed. At 23:01 hrs Summer East Time, the present author spotted an adult female of the katydid Erechthis gundlachi Bolívar, 1888 (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae: Conocephalinae: Agraeciini), which was

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THE PREDATOR BECOMES THE PREY eating a very young juvenile of the lizard Anolis homolechis (Cope, 1864). The katydid grabbed its prey with both fore- and mid-legs, while chewing it with its powerful mandibles. Immediately, a series of high- resolution color photos were taken in situ with a Nikon Coolpix S8100 digital camera (fig. 2a) and both specimens were captured and preserved in ethanol 85% as vouchers; unfortunately, the lizard head was lost in the vegetation during the capture process (fig. 2b). Both specimens were later deposited in the personal collection of the author with the following label data: CUBA: Santiago de Cuba Province: Santiago de Cuba Municipality: Sierra Maestra: Cordillera de La Gran Piedra: La Gran Piedra (20º00'35"N – 75º37'42"; 1,200 m a.s.l.); hanging on underside of a Potomorphe live leaf, 0.30 m above the roadside ground with grasses, ferns and bushes; 23/July/2017; S. Yong, R. Teruel, Y. Ricardo. Katydids are mostly omnivorous, but some are aggressively carnivorous (Capinera et al., 2004). The dietary habits of Conocephalinae are quite variable, nevertheless they prefer food protein: flowers, pollen, seeds, grasses, dead wood, and smaller insects such as butterflies, other katydids, beetles, stick insects and their eggs, embryos, and egg clutches of frogs and land snail, it is widely documented under natural conditions (Rentz, 1976; Hayes & Rentz, 1986; Naskrecki, 2000; Gwynne, 2001; Montealegre-Z. & Morris, 2003; Leong, 2011; Ingrisch & Tan, 2012; Perez-Gelabert, 2014; Chamorro-Rengifo & Braun, 2016; Perez-Gelabert & Yong, 2017; S. Yong, unpublished). Specifically, E. gundlachi has been so far recorded in natural conditions feeding on terrestrial snail, caterpillar, small insects, Phyllophaga beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) and stick insects (Perez-Gelabert, 2014; Perez-Gelabert & Yong, 2017). It is worth to mention here that Erechthis Bolívar, 1888 was regarded as monotypic until 2016. Its single species E. gundlachi was formerly known only from Cuba (Bolívar, 1888; Redtenbacher, 1891; Yong, 2015; Perez-Gelabert & Yong, 2017) and Hispaniola (Perez-Gelabert, 2014), but there is also a very old unconfirmed record from Puerto Rico (Redtenbacher, 1891), which still needs clarification. Currently this genus includes three nominal species, after the recent additions of De Luca & Morris (2016), who described E. levyi De Luca & Morris, 2016 (from Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas) and E. ayiti De Luca & Morris, 2016 (from Hispaniola). The record of Perez-Gelabert (2014) from Hispaniola was allegedly based upon 157 specimens from 37 localities scattered across 14 provinces of Dominican Republic. But paradoxically, part of the large sample examined by Perez-Gelabert (2014) was most likely misidentified: a male paratype of E. ayiti was collected 12 km southeast of San Francisco de Macorís (see De Luca & Morris, 2016: 53–54), in the same general area as five females from Loma Quita Espuela and one male and two females from Loma Guaconejo, all recorded as E. gundlachi by Perez-Gelabert (2014: 41). Theoretically, all 137 specimens studied by Perez-Gelabert (2014) were compared and found to be conspecific with a single adult male from a Cuban site very close to the type-locality of E. gundlachii, identified as such in 1964 by the reputed Cuban entomologist Pastor Alayo Dalmau (see Perez-Gelabert, 2014: 41). The situation discussed above turns necessary to confirm the actual identity of the Hispaniolan records of E. gundlachi given by Perez-Gelabert (2014), as well as the natural preys recorded for it by Perez- Gelabert (2014) and Perez-Gelabert & Yong (2017), because different species are most likely involved. A thorough revision of the genus Erechthis is being conducted by the present author (S. Yong, in preparation), which shall clarify most of these questions.

Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to Rolando Teruel (Centro Oriental de Ecosistemas y Biodiversidad -Bioeco, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba) for the field assistance and all the help given for this paper: preparation of plates, language and style correction and useful comments during all stages of the manuscript. Special thanks are also given to Fr. Alejandro J. Sánchez Muñoz (San Juan, Puerto Rico), who kindly provided the photographs used as figure 1 herein. I also thank Ansel Fong (Bioeco) for the identification of the Anolis specimen, Yoendri Ricardo (Bioeco) for his enthusiastic field assistance and Tomás Michel Rodríguez (Havana, Cuba) for the literature on the Cuban Anolis. Holger Braun (Museo de La Plata, Argentina) kindly provided bibliography on katydid natural history. Moreover, I thank two anonymous reviewers for their peer-review of the manuscript.

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